


Lie to Me

by mermaiddrunk



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:29:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3191921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaiddrunk/pseuds/mermaiddrunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thought of Carmilla without her is a very specific kind of pain. The kind that makes her want to throw herself at the feet of some ancient, unnamed deity and bemoan the unfairness of it all. The kind of pain that makes her wish she could live forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lie to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fic using the lines: "Do you ever think we should just stop this?" and "Can I kiss you?"
> 
> Title blatantly stolen from a Buffy episode.

They’re in a diner, somewhere on a lonely strip of road between two equally lonely towns whose names Laura can’t remember, when Carmilla says, “Do you ever think we should just stop this?”

Laura’s fork hovers in mid-air, a piece of syrup-drenched waffle, hanging off the tip. She lowers it slowly and licks her lips. The corners are sticky with maple syrup. “Stop what?”

Carmilla sucks at her milkshake straw, which makes an obnoxious sound as she reaches the end.

“This thing that we’re doing,” she replies softly, not really looking at Laura.

Laura’s heart begins a slow, heavy hammering that starts in her ribcage and moves up to throat.

“You mean us? You mean dating?” The one and a half waffles she’s already consumed turns in her stomach, making her feel queasy.

Carmilla swirls her straw around the mostly empty glass, making a mess of the ice cream at the bottom.

“I just wonder sometimes.” She pokes at the gloopy mess, “I wonder if we’re kidding ourselves.”

Laura pushes her plate aside and leans forward on her elbows. They’re on opposite sides of the small booth at the back of the diner. Carmilla looks particularly pale under the harsh florescent lighting.

She looks tired, which Laura figures is due to them being on the road for four days, living in and out of cheap motels. It’s a long trip home and this is the first time she’s attempted the “scenic” drive instead of the three-hour flight.

She’d argued with her dad that after three years at Silas, she could manage a five day road trip.

“Besides,” she had told him cheerily, “Carmilla will be with me.”

And now here was Carmilla, suggesting that maybe, somehow she wouldn’t.

“What are you talking about?” Carmilla can’t look at her and Laura thinks she’s going to be sick. Right there, on the hard leather seats of some nondescript diner in the middle of Crapsville, Nowhere.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Her voice is small, and strained, like the words don’t want to actualise and form meaning.

Carmilla’s head snaps up and with surprising intensity she says, “No.” Even as Laura thinks, _Oh god. That’s why she agreed to go on this trip. This is a break-up trip_.

As if sensing the spiral of her thoughts, or maybe it’s just the look of sheer panic on her face, Carmilla reaches forward and puts her hand over Laura’s. “Look, I said it all wrong, okay? I didn’t mean-” she sighs, as if she’s frustrated with herself.  “I’ve just been thinking lately.”

“About how we’re _kidding ourselves_?” Laura throws Carmilla’s words back at her in a trembling voice. She’s scared, and fear tends to make her defensive, all walls up and words she’ll regret later.

 She and Carmilla have that in common.

“About how you’re graduating soon. And then you’re moving into your own place. And you’re going to be getting a job and eventually…”

She trails off and all Laura hears is you, you, you. There is no we.

“Things change. You’ll figure that out soon enough. You won’t be twenty-two forever.” Carmilla’s looking down again. She fidgets with the straw-paper, tearing it into tiny pieces and Laura frowns, fear and sadness morphing into anger.

“Are you trying to be a condescending ass or is it just happening naturally? And what does it matter how old I get? I’ll never be as old as you.”

“Exactly,” Carmilla meets Laura’s eyes with a hard look.

Laura frowns. “What are you getting at?”

Carmilla’s own agitation begins to show and she pushes her milkshake glass aside. “Look, forget I said anything. Are you ready to get out of here?”

Laura stares at her for a moment, in bewilderment, wondering how she can just clap her hands and walk away, as if she didn’t just stick an ice-pick straight into Laura’s chest.

“Fine,” she mutters eventually, making to stand. “I’ve lost my appetite anyway.”

____

They drive back to the motel in silence. At least, Laura drives. Carmilla turns to the window, elbow on the armrest, staring into the dark, starless night. The car smells sweet and peanut-buttery, like the (bag of) Reese’s pieces that Laura had finished that afternoon.

Twice Laura wants to turn and say something, anything to lift the heavy mood that’s settled between them like two phantom hands pushing them from each other, but Carmilla’s facing away and Laura wouldn’t know what to say anyway. She still feels nauseous.

The motel isn’t bad, as cheap, roadside motels go. Carmilla had wanted to splurge, and stay in one of the nicer guesthouses a way off the motorway, but Laura wanted to do a proper road trip, _like in the movies._

Carmilla had made some throwaway comment about how she wasn’t staying in any place that thought taxidermy made for good décor and Laura had laughed hard. “No taxidermy,” she had said, crossing her heart.

They trudge up the steps and from below, the blue florescent glow of a kidney-shaped pool flickers against their faces. Laura waits for Carmilla to retrieve the dirty, white key card from her back pocket.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Carmilla announces once she tosses her coat and bag over a chair. The coat falls off the edge and onto the floor. No-one makes any attempt to retrieve it.

Laura says nothing. Only sits at the edge of the bed, in a room that smells of cigarette smoke and peppermint schnapps. She unzips her parka and shivers.

The shower turns on with a splutter and a wheeze.

Three years, she thinks. Three years since that whole debacle with the Dean and the book and the missing girls. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. But Silas is the school that keeps on giving and they’ve since averted two more apocalypses, killed a giant troll and saved half the school from selling their souls to a demonic opossum-worshipping cult.

There are… issues, of course when it comes to dating a vampire. Although most of them arise less because Carmilla is a vampire and more because Carmilla is Carmilla. And so they fight. A lot. And they make up every time. And it works. Or, Laura thought it did. Until now. 

She yawns and realises she wants to sleep. She wants to turn over and hug her misery close and forget about everything Carmilla said in the diner. But the words keep replaying over and over in her head, like an error message on a faulty computer.

Laura stands up and goes to the long mirror in the corner of the room. She takes the band from her wrist and ties up her hair in a haphazard ponytail and the silvery crescent scar on her neck catches the light.

It’s begun to heal again and she realises that Carmilla hasn’t fed off of her for over a month. Not since she’d been sick, right after finals.

Suddenly Laura stops. Her words coming back to her. _What does it matter how old I get? I’ll never be as old as you._

“Exactly,” Carmilla had said, her eyes dark and focused. _Exactly._

A flutter of comprehension begins to take form in her mind exactly as Carmilla exits the bathroom wearing tiny sleep shorts she’d stolen from Laura and a ratty old Ramones tee.

“There’s no more hot water,” she announces unapologetically, before falling back onto the hard, squeaky mattress.

Laura turns to her. “I wanna talk about what you said in the diner.”

“I don’t.” Carmilla reaches for the book on the nightstand - a yellowed copy of Goethe’s _Die Leiden des jungen Werthers_ that she picked up at the second-hand book store they visited the day before.

She begins flipping through it in earnest, studiously ignoring Laura’s sigh.

And so she kneels at the edge of the bed, her knees brushing against Carmilla’s toes. “Can we just talk about this?”

Carmilla flips a page, the tattered cover obscuring her face. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“I wouldn’t call wanting to break-up nothing.”

Carmilla exhales a breath and finally lowers her book. “I never said I wanted to break up.”

Laura shrugs her shoulders, “You implied it.”

When Carmilla says nothing and lifts up her book again, Laura quickly asks, “Is this because I was sick?”

Carmilla goes still, her face blank.

“It is, isn’t it? I got a virus and you got spooked?” Laura wants to smack herself for not seeing it before. She’d been out with a really bad case of the flu for almost two weeks after writing her last paper. It was so serious that Perry had suggested they take her to hospital for fear of dehydration.

Carmilla had done the good girlfriend act and mopped her brow, and fed her her meds, and read to her when she wasn’t totally delirious. But after, once Laura was better, Carmilla went sort of quiet, which, at the time, Laura had attributed to exhaustion. She knew Carmilla wasn’t sleeping while she had lay shivering in a pool of sweat and delirium.  

But that had been weeks ago. And she was fine now.

“Is that what this is about?” She looks at Carmilla, desperately willing her to say something.

And finally, in a voice so soft Laura has to sort of lean in to hear it, “You looked so small.”

Carmilla meets Laura’s eyes and then looks down again, as if afraid of what Laura may see in her face. “You were just _lying_ there. And you looked so-” she shakes her head and bites down on her lips, to stop herself from saying any more.

Laura watches the play of emotion over her face. She wants to reach out and pull Carmilla in, but three years has taught her when Carmilla wants to be touched, and when she needs space. This time, it’s the latter. So, she says lightly, casually, “Carm, c’mon. It was just the flu. I’m okay now.”

Carmilla looks at her Laura as if she’s trying to make her understand something she’s not quite getting. “I’ve lived long enough to know that even the smallest things can lead to the unthinkable. And I know you’re constantly doing stupid, reckless, ridiculous things. But all of those times, I’m there. Ready to back you up, or save your ass.” She holds up her palms when Laura looks ready to protest, “Which, I realise you’re perfectly capable of doing all on your own. But I find myself rather fond of your ass and so it’s in my best interests to keep it… and you out of harm’s way.”

“Which I appreciate,” Laura replies with a small smile, hoping to coax one out of Carmilla.

But she continues in that sombre tone. “But you got sick,” her voice breaks on the last word. “Really sick, and I couldn’t do anything except sit there and watch. There wasn’t any sword, or spell. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is, Laura? How terrifying? To know that the one person you love most in the world is hurt and there’s nothing you can do except feed them orange juice through a fucking straw and hope that modern medicine has reached a point where you can trust in it.”

She sounds so broken, so despondent and Laura can’t not reach out and touch her. “Carm-” she begins, closing her hand over Carmilla’s raised knee. But she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how to comfort, because the one thing Carmilla’s truly afraid of, is the one thing that is inevitable.

Carmilla’s eyes dart from Laura’s hand to her face and she swallows and blinks back tears and Laura thinks she could count on one hand the number of times she’s seen her this vulnerable.

“So you see, buttercup” she begins softly. “I don’t _want_ to stop doing this with you. It’s just that sometimes, the thought of not doing this with you forever, kind of…” she shrugs a shoulder in a way that makes her look young and small and so unsure, “… hurts.”

Laura looks at Carmilla for a long time, feeling a hot stinging behind her eyes, the fizzy bubble of tears in her throat. And she tells herself, _don’t cry, Laura. Don’t you dare._

So, rather than crying, she moves up the bed until she’s right next to Carmilla, her knees next to Carmilla’s chest, the tips of her long hair falling against Carmilla’s shoulder.

Carmilla looks up at her, her dark eyes big and watery and Laura knows she’s embarrassed by this whole thing. And so Laura leans down, until her mouth is just a breath away from Carmilla’s and she asks, in a quiet voice, “Can I kiss you now?”

Carmilla nods, just once and Laura leans down and places the gentlest of kisses against her lips.

“See,” she whispers. “I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

A heartbeat passes and Carmilla reaches up and brings Laura’s mouth down. Except this time, the kiss is hard, crushing, as if daring Laura to pull away.

She doesn’t. 

Instead, she gasps into Carmilla’s open mouth, allowing herself to be devoured. The kiss tastes of desperation and of possession.

 _Mine_ , it seems to say. Y _ou’re mine_.  In another time, on another day, Laura would be able to explain exactly why that whole concept was problematic and creepy in an Edward Cullen type of way and why, really, she was no-one’s but her own. But as Carmilla tangles her fingers in Laura’s hair and tugs at her lower lip with her straight, blunt teeth, sucking and biting all Laura can think is _yes, yours._

Her tongue is suddenly heavy with words like _forever_ and _always_ and _love, love, love_. She doesn’t say it, she doesn’t say anything, mostly because Carmilla has taken to sucking on her tongue and raking her nails down Laura’s back. And she whimpers slightly because it hurts in the best kind of way.

Vaguely, she wonders if Carmilla’s punishing her for being mortal. Punishing her for dying one day.

The thought of Carmilla without her is a very specific kind of pain. The kind that makes her want to throw herself at the feet of some ancient, unnamed deity and bemoan the unfairness of it all. The kind of pain that makes her wish she could live forever.

And then she hates herself, because she knows she doesn’t want to live forever, not even for Carmilla.

Twisted up in guilt and sadness and lust and _love, love, love_ , she pulls at the hem of Carmilla’s thin t-shirt, pushing it up past her breasts and over her head.

Laura moves between Carmilla’s knees. This is the closest she’ll get to the divine, and so she says in a breathless tone, “I could worship you.”

And Carmilla juts her hips up in a wordless reply. Laura moves down and places a soft kiss against Carmilla’s ankle, against her calf, against the ticklish spot behind her knee. Carmilla squirms and Laura kisses her again and again, moving up her thigh until Carmilla’s breath comes out in intermittent pants. She’s never understood how, during sex, Carmilla goes breathless and winded when she doesn’t take in any oxygen to begin with. Muscle-memory, Carmilla tells her once, and Laura thinks it’s bizarre, but she’s grateful for it nonetheless. She _likes_ that she can make Carmilla pant and gasp and perhaps, for a dazzling moment or two, feel human.

Carmilla’s legs tremble as Laura’s mouth closes over her. She throws her arms above her head, and, white-knuckled, her fingertips push against the paint-chipped head board. Laura’s cloudy mind is somehow aware of the incessant _squeak, squeak, squeak_ of the mattress, but she can’t bring herself to care.

All that matters is the way Carmilla tastes against her tongue, the way Carmilla clamps her thighs against Laura’s head, hot skin on flushed cheeks.

She sucks and laps and just when Carmilla begins to make that specific breathy moan that Laura’s learnt to listen for, she curls her two fingers forward in just the right way.

And Carmilla screams.

Laura’s barely raised her head, when Carmilla lifts herself up on her elbows and pulls Laura up, kissing her thoroughly before pushing her onto her back, with a bounce of the mattress. Somewhere between this, Laura’s clothes have dematerialised. She doesn’t mind, she never liked that shirt much anyway.

And then Carmilla straddles her, leaving a warm, wet trail on Laura’s lower abdomen and then her stomach as she inches up. Instinctively, Laura grabs onto Carmilla’s hips, urging her on in an erratic rhythm. She bends to kiss her sloppily, half-heartedly, too unfocused to apply any real skill.

And Laura shifts and pushes Carmilla back, manoeuvring them so that she can feel Carmilla against her. She inhales sharply at the sensation and bites down to keep herself from crying out. The walls are thin.

Carmilla leans forward to brace her palms flat against that thin wall and finds a steady, practiced rhythm. Fragments of sweet, familiar oblivion and then Laura feels the build of pressure inside and she arches up, reaching out blindly to pull Carmilla into a kiss.

She wants her close as she breaks apart, she wants Carmilla to catch very piece of her and put her back together again.

Slowly, the swirling colours behind her eyelids fade to black and Laura blinks once, twice and finds her vision obscured by the mass of dark hair over her eyes, in her mouth. She drags her fingers down Carmilla’s sides, reassured by the sweaty, solid weight of the body tangled up in hers.

They lie there until the Laura’s calf starts cramping and she shivers under the growing coolness of Carmilla’s skin.

“You’re heavy,” she murmurs, pushing Carmilla off of her gently.

The mattress groans from exertion as Carmilla rolls onto her side to face Laura. Her eyes are closed, and she looks half-asleep, but she wiggles forward, fitting herself against Laura’s body in a move they’ve long perfected.

Laura watches Carmilla sleep.

She watches the way her eyelids flicker and her nose twitches, the way a cat’s whiskers sometimes does. It’s totally not creepy, she tells herself as Carmilla shuffles closer, burying herself against Laura’s much warmer body.

She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, just sort of absorbed in each other. Eventually, she whispers, “You’re my forever. You know that, right?”

Carmilla doesn’t open her eyes. Doesn’t move at all. But she says, “I know.”

A minute goes by. It might be an hour.

“It’ll never be enough, will it?”

Carmilla blinks open her eyes and looks at Laura for a long, long time, before placing a soft of kiss against her chin. “It’s enough for now.”

It’s a lie they're both willing to live with.


End file.
